THE PROPERTIES OF SUPERCLUSTERS (GALAXY CLUSTERS, LARGE-SCALE STRUCTURE)

Over the past decade and a half the study of the formation and evolution of galaxies, clusters, and superclusters has experienced remarkable growth. Advances in detectors and digital image processing have made the acquisition of galaxy redshifts and photometry much simpler and less time-intensive. As is often the case in science, however, the increase in the amount of data has produced more questions than answers about the distribution of galaxies and their clustering properties. To quote a participant in the 1986 Santa Cruz summer workshop on "nearly" normal galaxies: "we knew more about galaxies 15 years ago than we do now.".;This thesis was undertaken in an attempt to answer some of the questions regarding the nature of superclusters by performing a global statistical analysis of the Abell and Zwicky cluster catalogs and by studying, in finer detail, the distribution and dynamics of galaxies in the region of the Corona Borealis supercluster. During the course of these projects new redshifts for (TURN)90 Abell clusters were acquired and the number of measured galaxy redshifts and magnitudes in the Corona Borealis region was increased tenfold.;The thesis format is a compilation of 4 research papers written over the past 3 years. Chapter 1 is a discussion of the magnitude - redshift relation for Abell clusters and of the reliability of redshift estimates based on photometric data. Some of the new Abell cluster redshifts used in the analysis of the magnitude - redshift relation were measured by J. Patrick Henry (University of Hawaii, Honolulu). The results of a study of the clustering properties of Abell and Zwicky clusters using the two-point angular and spatial correlation function are presented in chapter 2. Chapter 3 contains a description of the large scale distribution of galaxies in the Corona Borealis region. The dynamics and kinematics of galaxies in the Corona Borealis supercluster are described in chapter 4. Abstracts summarizing the results of each project are presented at the start of each chapter.;Chapters 1 and 2 have been published in the Astronomical Journal and chapter 3 has been accepted for publication in the December 1986 issue of the Astronomical Journal.